Who are the Gypsies?

It’s a long story…

…but the short version is that “gypsy” is a derogatory term, just like so many other racially and hate-based terms around the world. The term "gypsy" dates back to the 1600s, when Greeks mistakenly believed that they had arrived from Egypt, so gave them a name that's a shorten form of "Egyptian," and it stuck.

In reality, the people commonly known as “gypsies” originated in the Indian subcontinent and then spread into the Middle East and Africa to Europe, and later the Americas. A more commonly accepted term today is Roma (Rroma, Romani), but that doesn't just refer to one ethnic group -- it refers to any number of groups that are all culturally distinct but trace their ancestry back to the group that started in modern-day Israel and migrated from the Indian subcontinent.

The Rom linguist W. R. Rishi gives the etymology of Rom from the Sanskrit[1] Rama, which translates into "one who roams about." The number of Persian, Armenian, and Greek terms in the various Romani dialects reflect their migrations, just as those related to Sanskrit and Hindi point to their common origin. Recent evidence, including blood-type research, points to a gathering of diverse peoples in the Punjab region of India, to form an army and its support groups to counter Muslim invaders.

In the eleventh century some of this group moved north through Kashmir and west into Persia. After some generations they pushed on to Armenia, then fled Turkish invaders by entering the Byzantine Empire. By the thirteenth century they reached the Balkan Peninsula; Serbian and Romanian terms came into their language. Thereafter they split into smaller groups that dispersed throughout Europe and were absorbed culturally and linguistically as influenced by their host countries. These divergent influences persist among Romani subgroups today.

The Roma had reached Western Europe from regions dominated by the feared Ottoman Empire. Their language and appearance set them apart from the resident populations; they repeatedly suffered harassment or worse at the hands of the local majority. Such treatment likely encouraged their traditionally nomadic way of life. Eventually Europeans used "gypsies," or related words, to name not only a particular ethnic group of people, but also other groups of people, unrelated by blood, whose traveling lifestyles made them resemble ethnic Gypsies.

Most of the negative stereotypes associated with the Roma community, were perpetrated by non-Romani people, who adopted both dress and a nomadic lifestyle - as the Roma community has traditionally kept to itself. Unfortunately, those prejudices remain today as a the core challenge facing the Romani community.